


Andy's Story (3)

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [33]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Boarding School, Canon Compliant, Culture Shock, Fix-It, Gen, High School, Parent-Child Relationship, Psi Corps, Rogue Telepaths, Sacrifice, Slice of Life, Teenagers, Telepath War, Telepath culture, The Corps Was Right, The Psi Corps tag is mine, Unlikely Hero, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 05:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10610514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: We now take a short break from the re-writing of "Eyes" from Gray's POV to bring you a two-part Birthday story!It's April 12, the day the Corps was founded, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EVERYONE!An unlikely hero saves the day on Birthday. ^_^The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> An excerpt from the Psi Corps student handbook, relevant to the story below, can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10604910).
> 
> Part 1 of Andy's story is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10227857/chapters/22694822).
> 
> Part 2 of Andy's story is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10413966/chapters/22996560).
> 
> The later chapters of Andy's story (during and after the Telepath War) have not yet been posted.

February 2263. Chicago.

            _“Tonight we bring you another dramatic story, this time from Chicago, where the Corps rescued a teen from nightmarish conditions. Psi Corps youth workers reported to the house after the boy’s parents withdrew him from school to keep him from joining the Corps, even holding him captive in his own home."_

            The screen showed a suburban home, surrounded by police tape.

_“According to authorities, the youth workers were allegedly attacked by the boy’s father, who fired at them from the second storey of the home, through a narrow opening in a tarp designed to obscure line of sight. One youth worker was killed instantly, while the other escaped with injuries and called for help. A Psi Cop and bloodhound unit responded to the scene and took the man and his wife into custody. Warrants were obtained, and authorities searched the home, and discovered financial and other ties to known rogue cells in the area.”_

            “You’ll never take my boy!” the man in handcuffs shouted into the camera as bloodhounds led him to a waiting police vehicle. “You’ll do nothing but enslave him and fill his mind with propaganda! You’ll turn him into a mindless tool of evil! You’re worse than Nazis! I’ll fight you to my dying breath! Byron lives!”

            The news returned to the announcer, an attractive young blonde woman wearing a colorblock skirtsuit, black gloves and a shiny psi insignia badge.

_“The fourteen-year-old boy is now safely in Corps custody.”_

            “Thank God,” said Henry, next to Andy on the lounge floor. “Mundanes are crazy. They hate us when we don’t rescue their kids, but they hate us when we do, too.”

            “Normals just hate telepaths,” replied Hideo. “It’s not complicated.”

*****

            Every week since Andy had arrived at school, another new student arrived, having been noticed on routine screenings or brought in for testing by parents or teachers. Their presence, rather than making life easier for Andy, only made it more complicated. The teachers made sure that every new arrival had a Corps-raised roommate, to force them to acclimate as much as possible, but it only went so far. Rather than learn to blend in, as Andy had, they broke small rules to test the teachers’ limits. They left their beds unmade, arrived to class late, wore their uniforms disheveled, or broke curfew.

            One night, Andy woke up to go to the bathroom and smelled tobacco smoke. He followed the smell down the hall to the lounge, where he saw three of the new girls standing out on the balcony, with the glass door partly open. He could see that at least one of them was smoking.

            Where had she got cigarettes?

            He went back to his room and woke Hideo.

            “Three of the new girls, they’re out on the balcony. Barbara’s got a cigarette. That’s not allowed, is it?”

            “The Corps allows adults to smoke,” Hideo said, “but tobacco’s not allowed on campus.” Hideo got out of bed and started to get dressed. “We should tell Teacher Jovanović, and let him handle it.”

            “But…” Now Andy had his doubts. “If we get them in trouble, they’ll hate us.”

            “Andy, we all have a responsibility to look after each other here. All telepaths do. The Corps has rules to keep us safe, and smoking isn’t safe. The Corps is Mother and Father.”

            “But… It’s not a big deal. I never should have woke you.”

            Hideo shook his head adamantly.

            “No no, you did the right thing! Get dressed.” He hesitated. “Or at least get your gloves on. You can’t go out and see a teacher like that.”

            Andy scowled. He hadn’t actually intended to go to see the teachers bare-handed. He knew better. “If we tell a teacher,” he protested, “the girls will hate us.”

            “So what if they do? They chose to break school rules. What punishment they get is their own fault, not yours or mine.”

            “You go, not me.”

            Hideo buttoned up his uniform. “Really? Teacher Jovanović will know you’re the one who saw it, but that you refused to report it to him yourself. Maybe if he were a normal he wouldn’t know… No. He will question you in the morning. He will ask you what is more important to you – the Corps, or the feelings of a few laters you’ve barely even met. I don’t envy you, but it is your choice.”

            Reluctantly, Andy slipped on his gloves. “But it’s a small thing. It’s not like they tried to kill someone.”

            “A small rule today, a big rule tomorrow,” Hideo recited. “That’s what we always said back in the cadres. Telepaths hold each other accountable. The Corps isn’t just the teachers, Andy – it’s you, it’s me, it’s all of us together.”

            Andy accompanied Hideo down the hall to the far end of the floor, and stood quietly as Hideo knocked on the teacher’s door and told him what happened. Teacher Jovanović thanked them both and sent them back to their room.

            “And now?” Andy asked Hideo.

            “And now we go back to bed! It’s 1 AM. I’m exhausted!”

            Hideo went back to sleep with a clear conscience, while Andy sat awake, thinking.


	2. Chapter 2

            In the morning, when Andy and Hideo left for class, they found Barbara already standing in the courtyard, on the pedestal of shame, bits of vegetables stuck in her already unruly brown curls. Someone, Andy could see, had used her for target practice.[1]

            Andy didn’t quite understand why the Corps made disobedient students stand as “statues” in the courtyard, but there were still many things he didn’t understand.

            Teacher Jovanović stood several paces off, watching her very carefully.

            “My name is Barbara Cook!” she shouted toward her classmates as they walked by. “I stand here today because I broke curfew with two of my friends, Halilah Qureshi and Nicole Sartorio! It was all my idea! I also broke school rules by smoking on campus! I stand here as a lesson to my classmates never to break school rules!”[2]

            She was shooting daggers at Andy and Hideo with her eyes.

            Andy turned to his roommate. “She’d jump off that platform and strangle me if a teacher wasn’t standing right there,” he whispered.

            “Let it go. It’s her own fault she’s up there. She’ll learn her lesson.”

            “But she hates me now.”

            “Andy, the Corps saved her life. Tobacco can kill you!”

            “Shut up!” Barbara yelled at Hideo. “I heard you, you little snot! I don’t need your stupid health lesson!”

            The teacher gave her an additional two hours on the pedestal for her outburst.

            But Barbara’s behavior didn’t improve. That Saturday evening, the Minor Academy held its weekly vid night, but Barbara just complained.

            “All the vids are the same, and they’re all stupid,” she whined. “I can tell you the plot right now – some kid from a normal family shows up at school, and breaks the rules. Something bad happens to him, and all the Corps-raised telepaths teach that kid how great life in the Corps is. The end! Meanwhile I still have three chapters to read for English class, but I have to see this stupid vid instead.”

            She and her friends sat in the back row and made rude comments during the film, laughing at everything on screen. Barbara was an unusually strong telepath, and she ‘cast images of the characters naked, or wearing silly hats, or in tutus.

            Andy agreed the film was pretty shallow, but he didn’t like Barbara’s behavior either. There were kids who wanted to see the film, and she was ruining it for them in order to have a laugh with her friends.

            “You might learn something if you watched the vid instead of mocking it,” Hideo said, angry.

            “Barbara’s disrupting the vid!” someone called. “Teacher Huetson!”

            The old man pulled Barbara and her friends out in the hall for a “talk.” Andy sighed.

*****

            Andy had expected to feel less alone as other students from normal homes arrived on campus, but he only felt more confused and out of place. He didn’t entirely fit in with the Corps-raised telepaths, who had all known each other since preschool, but he didn’t fit in with the newcomers either, who quickly formed their own clique, even as they accused the Corps-raised telepaths of being cliquish.[3]

            “You were raised by normals?” a new girl named Gabrielle asked him the next day at lunch, coming up to his table where he sat with his Corps-raised friends.

            “Yeah, why?”

            “You’re the snitch! They told me you were from a normal home but I didn’t believe it.”

            He rolled his eyes. “What’s it to you who my parents are?”

            “Because you’re supposed to be one of us. You’re not supposed to be sitting with them.”

            “Who said so?”

            “Barbara.”

            “Barbara? She hates me!”

            “She hates you because she hates the Corps. Since the day she got here she thought you were cute. She made up her mind that you were hers and told everyone hands off, she was gonna get you. But then you had to start in with all that Corps crap, so now she hates you. Get it?”

            He didn’t. He blinked awkwardly as Gabrielle walked back to her table. None of his Corps-raised friends had been paying attention, as if Gabrielle had been completely invisible.

            “Who do you think will win the Patel Prize this year?” Hideo was asking the others.

            “The what?”

            “You’ve never heard of Burian Patel?”

            Andy shook his head.

            “Haven’t you ever seen the statue out in our courtyard?”

            This statue was real, made of solid bronze. Andy had passed it many times, but never stopped to see who it had been dedicated to. He’d never cared.

            “Burian Patel was a bloodhound who gave his life in the Black Fox raid back in ’22.[4] He graduated from this school. We honor his sacrifice every year on Birthday with a prize to one student who best exemplifies the values of the Corps.”

            “The students vote?” Andy was reminded of popularity contests in school, and of student elections. If Barbara and her clique got equal votes, he’d never win anything. Her clique of laters grew by the week.

            Hideo gave him a strange look. “Of course not,” he answered, “the award comes from the Corps, like all awards do.”

            “Except for commendations from the Senate,” Deepa corrected.[5]

            “We’re just kids, Deepa, not Psi Cops!”

            “I’m just being technical.”

            “You’re just being pedantic.”

            “Who won this Patel Prize last year?” Andy asked.

            Hideo pointed across the dining hall at an older student with nut brown skin and black wavy hair. “Jermaine leRoy, Deepa’s heartthrob.”

            “He is not!” she shouted, a little too loud.

            Hideo laughed. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Deepa. He’s a P8, with all top grades, and he’s the best in his class at both fencing and chess. If I were into boys, I’d be in love with him, too!”

            “I kinda like boys sometimes,” said Henry, the freckle-faced kid who’d asked Andy about his sexual orientation on his first day at school. Andy had sarcastically told him that he was into Narn. “Jermaine’s hot.”

            “Stop it, both of you!” shouted Deepa.

            Andy could feel her flush.

            Hideo shook his head, jealous.

 

[1] Other students torment the "statue of the day" in various ways - they dress them up in costumes, taunt them, and at one point, students put peanut butter in Bester's hair. Gregory Keyes, Deadly Relations, p. 81-85, 125. The humiliation is part of the punishment, but once the "statue time" is over, students are fully accepted back into the community.

[2] _Id._

[3] Deadly Relations, p. 125

[4] Deadly Relations, p. 162-167 (the raid mentions bloodhounds present, and some killed)

[5] See Gregory Keyes, Final Reckoning, p. 243 (“I have the commendations to prove it, a drawerful.”). See also, Dark Genesis, p. 90 (Desa Alexander, for her work as an agent of the Metasensory Regulatory Authority, awarded the Gold Shield and the Crossed Arrow by the EA Senate for “outstanding service to the Earth Alliance and for Bravery, Integrity and Honor”).


	3. Chapter 3

            Andy wasn’t too surprised when the boy from the Corps news broadcast showed up at school. Most telepath teens in the greater Chicago area – maybe from even further away – ended up at the same school.

            Unsuspecting, Barbara had tried to reach out to him at breakfast on his first day. Mason had been sitting all alone in the corner of the cafeteria, on the floor, keeping as much distance between himself and the others as possible.

            Andy and a few others came along to watch. New arrivals always provided fodder for some gossip, and this kid was strange.

            “Hey,” she said. “I’m Barbara.”

            “Don’t touch me, you filthy pslut,” he snapped at her, and made the sign of the cross in her face.

            “What did you just call me?”

            It was fitting justice, Andy mused darkly, that for all she hated the Corps, someone raised in the Corps had to explain the slur to her.

            “I don’t think you get it,” Barbara said, angry. “I’m from a normal family, like you. I just got here a few weeks ago. I hate this place, and I hate the Corps. We can’t do shit here: no smoking, no drinking, everybody’s all goodie goodie. You break the rules, they kick your ass. You don’t have to play tough guy with me, I’m on your side.”

            He spat at her. “Good cop, bad cop. I know all your tricks. My dad’s with the Resistance. Fuck you all. You’re all in on it.”

            “In on what?”

            “The conspiracy. You don’t hate the Corps, this is all an act. You claim to hate the Corps, do you? Then why haven’t you run away? Why haven’t you picked up a weapon and fought back?”

            “Fought who?”

            “You know, killed a teacher.”

            Barbara’s jaw fell open in horror. “Killed a teacher?”

            Andy and his friends backed up a step. This new student wasn’t merely weird – he was dangerous _._

            “If you really hated the Corps,” Mason was saying, “you’d do it. You’re a fake, and you’re a coward. You’re all part of the plot to get to me. I know what you’re all up to. I know all your tactics. The Corps’ brainwashed every one of you, but they’re never going to get me.”

            He stood and tried to leave the cafeteria, but a teacher made him stay, so he went to the opposite corner of the hall and sat on the floor there instead.

            “Holy shit,” said Barbara. “Where’d they pick up that sick puppy?” She turned to Andy. “Or are the teachers playing mind games with me so I won’t break curfew again?”

            Andy shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He told her about the segment he’d seen on the news the week before. “He tried to commit suicide so he wouldn’t be sent here. His dad killed a Corps youth worker. Shot her in the chest as she approached the house.”

            Barbara stood speechless for a few moments, looking across the crowded cafeteria in the direction Mason had gone. “Sure, this place sucks, but… kill a teacher?”

*****

            No one tried to talk to Mason for days. For his safety (or the safety of the other students), the teachers made him sleep in the infirmary where staff would be awake to watch him around the clock. He went to class, but sat in the back and refused to participate. At sports, he stood on the sidelines. If anyone tried to talk to him, even just to get him to eat, he carried on about his dad, the Resistance, and violence. He carved “Remember Byron” into one of the cafeteria trays with a knife, and the teachers decided he would only be given plastic cutlery from then on. Andy remembered having heard on the news, before he'd entered the Corps, something about a rogue telepath named Byron Gordon who’d set himself on fire. There was little direct talk of the incident on Corps news programs, but the normal media had covered the incident extensively the summer before. He wondered if Mason’s behavior was related. The teachers certainly took it very seriously.

            After several weeks of enduring Mason’s anti-social behavior, even the most determined among the Corps-raised telepaths gave up. Rumors spread around campus that he was seeing mental health professionals several times a week, but putting up mental blocks and refusing to talk. He wouldn’t do homework or take exams – when he wrote anything at all, it was along the lines of “Byron Still Lives” and “you’re all dead.”

            “What does he think this place is?” asked Barbara. “It’s a strict-ass boarding school, not 1984. He doesn’t want any friends? To hell with him.”

            From what Andy could tell, the teachers, too, were somewhat at a loss what to do. Mason was stubborn in a way they were unfamiliar with. They never discussed him with the other students, but Andy and the others could feel their thoughts. Should he be moved to a different school? Where?

            And his defiance echoed eerily with the news reports. Every several days, there was news of more unrest in the outside world, with rogue cells forming in city after city, apparently despite the best efforts of the Corps and local police departments.

            “Why can’t they stop them?!” Henry shouted at the screen. “There can’t be too many of these rogues around, and if they were once in the Corps, then we know who they are. We know everything about them.”

            _“Director York met again today with the Senate oversight committee to discuss the recent increase in rogue activity._ ”

            An old, bald man – gloveless – stood in front of a podium and urged patience and restraint. Rogue telepaths, he insisted, posed no substantial threat. The Corps would have the problem wrapped up soon. There was, he reassured the public, no reason to worry.

            Andy looked around the lounge, especially at his Corps-raised friends. They squirmed. Something was wrong, but they couldn’t point to it.

            “He’s so full of shit,” said Barbara flatly.

            “Barbara! That’s the Director! Do you know who he is?!”

            Tempers flared, the Corps-raised telepaths zealously jumped to the defense of the director, and soon everyone was shouting. Andy stepped in to break up the fight, but it was several minutes before anyone could be quiet enough to listen to each other.

            “I’ve been out in the world,” Barbara was saying. “They don’t show you ISN here, they only show you the Corps news. You don’t see what’s going on. There are attacks, or at least attempts, every couple weeks. You guys wanna know what normals think? I’ll tell you – they’re more scared of telepaths now than they’ve been since 2156, when the Centauri landed. They’re not rioting in the streets and tossing us out windows, but they’re scared, and this ‘Director’ of yours is just giving speeches and not doing shit about the problem.”

            Henry was shaking his head. “But it shouldn’t matter. Whatever the Director says, Psi Cops know how to track down rogues, that’s what they do. That’s what they’ve always done. Why is this happening?”

            “I told you, because the Director…”

            “He what, doesn’t want the Corps to stop them?”

            The question hung in the air, too unthinkable to consider.

            “If the Corps doesn’t stop it,” Henry continued, “it’s just going to get worse.”

            The teens looked at each other in silence, as the news droned on about a different story. No one knew what to do.


	4. Chapter 4

            As spring approached, Andy’s school began to prepare for the April 12th Birthday festivities, marking the day the Corps was founded,[1] the collective “birthday” shared by all telepaths. Though students from normal homes personally celebrated many holidays,[2] Birthday was the only campus-wide party of the year.[3]

            Many school alumni, Andy learned, would be returning for the day’s events, and it was traditional for students to put on short plays,[4] each with a moral about life in the Corps: don’t be lazy, don’t be selfish, help others, and the like.[5]

            Kit asked Andy to take the lead role in their play.

            “No no, you should get the lead, Kit. I can’t act.”

            “Yes you can, we’ll help you,” said Andy’s friend Guy. “You’re new here. You should have the most important part.”

            “But I can’t remember lines.”

            “If you forget, we’ll ‘cast them to you.”

            Andy’s character, “The Selfish Spider,” had no costume – he had to learn how to ‘cast the illusion of looking like a giant spider.[6] It was hard to do for more than a few moments at a time, but got easier with practice.[7] Andy and his classmates spent an hour a day writing their play, and rehearsing.

            “I hate this,” said Barbara one day after classes, as the students split up into their small groups. “All these stupid little plays with stupid little morals.”

            “It’s about building community,” Andy tried to explain. “They’re like fables, you know, like Aesop, except we get to write our own.”

            “Our own?!” She laughed at him. “We have to say what they want. Then they get to show us off like good little parrots at the reunion. Well, they can make me say the lines, but they can’t make me believe it.”

            “It’s not all that bad, Barbara. You always make everything such a big deal. Can’t you ever relax?”

            “Are you trying for the Patel Prize?” she snapped. “You want to be the good kid on one of those vids who shows the newcomer how wonderful life in the Corps is?”

            “It’s just… forget it.” He went to find his friends and work on the play. There was no point in arguing with Barbara – she always looked for the worst in everything, and made a big fuss about it. Maybe the plays were silly, but he got to have fun with his friends. Why did she always have to try to ruin everything?

            He’d assumed that since he’d arrived first, the newer students would appreciate his help in learning how to fit in at school. Or maybe he was trying to repay the kindness that had been shown to him when he was new, and his parents abandoned him. The Corps’ raised students could have snubbed him, as his classmates back home had always done to new children who moved to town. But they hadn’t – his telepath classmates had always included him, even when he felt out of place, and sad about his family.

            No one had ever directly asked him to try to help acclimate the new students – they hadn’t had to. He’d taken it on himself. He thought that as someone raised in the normal world, the new kids would trust him more than they would the others. Or at least, that they should.

            He tried to put it out of his mind. Barbara was just looking for a fight. Maybe that was her problem – she was always looking for a fight, somewhere.

*****

            On Birthday, the school auditorium was filled to capacity both with familiar faces and alumni of all ages. Andy stood offstage as Deepa introduced the play.

            “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a village, and every year all the animals would come together and make a sacrifice, because if they didn’t, the rain wouldn’t fall and the crops wouldn’t grow. Squirrel brought a great big bag of acorns…”

            Kit came onstage, miming a heavy sack over his back, and ‘casting himself to look like a giant squirrel. He dropped the bag down into a pit, which was really a pile of pillows.

            “And the Queen Bee brought all her honey…”

            Larissa hoped into stage, flapping her arms like they were wings. She didn’t look very bee-like, but then again, she was only a P5. Kit was still on stage – he tried to give her yellow and black stripes, at least.

            “The Chicken brought lots and lots of eggs…”

            One by one his classmates made their “sacrifices.” Finally it was Andy’s turn. He scrambled onstage, in front of hundreds of strangers, and tried his very best to look large and creepy.

            “But the selfish spider,” said Deepa, “he thought only of himself.”

            “I won’t give you my precious silk!” Andy said, “it’s mine! I don’t care what happens to the village.”

            All the other “animals” gasped.

            “But Spider,” said the Chicken, “if you don’t give us your silk, the rain won’t fall and the crops won’t grow!”

            “I don’t care.”

            “But Spider,” said the Cow, “if you don’t give us your silk, everyone will die of hunger!”

            “I don’t care! All my silk is mine, mine mine!” Andy ran off-stage.

            “All the animals were very scared,” said Deepa. “They didn’t know what to do. Meanwhile, the selfish spider left the village and tried to make it on his own, all by himself, without the other animals. He ran away and traveled very far, till he came to a cottage.”

            The other students left the stage. Only Deepa and Andy remained. “I have plenty of silk,” Andy said, building a “web” in the corner. “I don’t need anybody else.”

            “First, he hid in the house of an old lady,” said Deepa. “He built a really big web in her attic. But the old lady saw him one day, and knocked down his web and shooed him out!”

            Chelsea, playing the old woman, chased him around the stage with a “broom.” _Shoo, spider, shoo!_ she ‘cast. “You abandoned your village, you abandoned your family! Get out of my house!”

            Andy ran off stage, waited for Chelsea to leave, and then came back and built another web.

            “I have plenty of silk,” he said again. “I don’t need her, I’ll build another web.”

            “This time he hid in the house of an old man,” said Deepa. “He built a really big web in the man’s shed. But one day he too saw the selfish spider, and shooed him out!”

            “Go away, spider!” shouted Henry, chasing Andy around the stage and trying to step on him. “I’ll stomp you to bits! I hate spiders!”

            “Everywhere the spider went,” Deepa said, “he built a new web, but everywhere he went, he was chased out. Finally he had nowhere to go other than back to his village.”

            All the other “animals” came back on stage, and Andy sheepishly joined them.

            “We’re starving,” said Chicken. “The rain won’t fall and the crops won’t grow. Look what you have done to us! Will you finally give us your silk?”

            “I would,” said Andy, “but I have no more silk left. I thought only of myself for a very long time, and I used up all my silk. I have nothing more to give you.”

            All the other “animals” sat down and “cried.”

            “We’re doomed,” they said, “we’re going to starve. There will be no rain, and there will be no crops!”

            All the animals flailed about and “cried” very dramatically.

            Deepa spoke up. “But the selfish spider,” she said, “he’d learned the error of his ways, and he’d learned not to be selfish any longer. So he jumped in the pit himself, with all the acorns and the honey and eggs and the milk…”

            Andy threw himself into the pile of pillows. Off stage, one of his classmates sounded a big “boom.”

            “…And because of the spider’s sacrifice, the heavens opened up and the rains fell again. And from then on, everyone taught their children to learn from the spider’s example and never to be selfish. The Corps is Mother and Father and everyone must make sacrifices so our family may stay healthy and strong. Telepaths depend on each other. The end!”[8]

            The audience cheered. Andy bowed with his classmates and, as he felt the waves of appreciation from all around him, and for the first time, he felt like he was truly part of something larger than himself.

            He wished his parents and sister had been there to watch. He wished they could see him now, but deep inside, he knew they would never understand.

 

[1] See _The Illusion of Truth_ for the day the Corps was founded (April 12 th, 2161). However, Gregory Keyes, Dark Genesis, p. 118 places the formation of the Corps in April 2156. This is the date I go with here. (The date of Birthday is never explicitly given in canon, but we know that it is warm weather in Geneva (Deadly Relations, p. 17-21), and I can’t think of a more logical date the Corps would choose for the collective Birthday holiday.)

[2] Telepaths have individual religions (see for example Crusade, _The Needs of Earth_ , wherein at the end Matheson talks about his Catholic faith), and there is nothing given in canon to suggest that the Corps prevents students from privately practicing their respective religions.

[3] Birthday is a campus-wide celebration. See Deadly Relations, p. 17-20. No other holidays are mentioned in canon as celebrated in the Corps.

[4] For a canon example of children in Psi Corps putting on a play for Birthday, see Deadly Relations, p. 18-19.

[5] See Deadly Relations, p. 18-19. (The class play has a moral lesson against laziness, and is about “[t]he sin of standing apart from the village. The sin of selfishness.”)

[6] _Id._ (no costumes, children ‘cast the illusion of costumes)

[7] In Deadly Relations, on p. 10, Bester doesn’t have much trouble doing this as a child, but he is a high P12, a child prodigy. In _Visitors from Down the Street_ (Crusade), Matheson, a P6, has difficulty holding such an illusion for more than a few moments, and suffers considerable strain, though he is also doing this to an alien mind (in a first contact scenario), so the alien’s mind is unfamiliar.

[8] School plays always have both pro-social and pro-Corps morals. See Deadly Relations, p. 18-19.


	5. Chapter 5

            Andy sipped some punch and looked out over the auditorium, filled with telepaths of all ages and ethnicities. He even spotted a few Psi Cops in the audience. Everyone looked so relaxed, so happy _._

            He’d never seen anything like it, a community so tight, so interconnected. He thought of the student art projects he’d seen upon his arrival. _I’m part of this now_ , he thought. _Some day, this will be me. These will be my people._

            He was still quietly watching the crowd when Henry ran up to him, agitated.

            “Andy, Barbara’s gone. Her group’s supposed to be up next but she’s run off!”

            A group of older students took the stage.

            He ground his teeth. Damn that Barbara, did she always have to cause trouble, even on Birthday? Couldn’t she not break the rules, just once?

            “She can’t have gotten too far,” Andy replied with annoyance. “Let’s find her.” They searched the halls of the auditorium building. “She told me she thinks the plays are stupid, and she doesn’t want to participate.”

            “That’s not right! This is a group play – it’s not all about her. I don’t understand some of these laters. Why does she hate the Corps?”

            Andy didn’t have an answer. They looked in all the small classrooms upstairs, but there was no sign of Barbara.

            “Now, Mason,” Henry was saying, “I understand why he hates the Corps. His parents were rogue sympathizers! There’s a rumor they used to hide telepaths in their basement – you know, rogues running away from the Corps. Can you imagine?”

            They walked back downstairs, and on a whim, decided to search the basement. No Barbara.

            “So of course he talks about blowing people up and destroying the Corps,” Henry was saying, “because that’s what rogues talk about. I’m glad he’s in the Corps now. He can learn what we’re really all about. And finally someone can raise him right.”

            “He talks about blowing people up?”

            “Yeah, but it’s nonsense,” said Henry. “He acts like he’s in a vid, talks about rescuing us from slavery, about killing thousands, about bombs. The teachers don’t even let him eat with metal cutlery, for crying out loud. How would he ever get parts for a bomb?”

            The boys decided to search outside, and finally found Barbara sitting under the statue of Burian Patel, sulking.

            “Your group’s waiting for you,” Henry told her, annoyed. “You’re holding everyone up.”

            “I won’t do it. I won’t be your parrot and tell everyone the Corps is my mother and father. To hell with all of you and your stupid birthday party.”

            “You’re being very selfish,” Henry chided. “Everything isn’t always about you, what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. If you’d been listening to the plays, you would know that.”

            “You go take my part if you love the plays so much. I don’t care, leave me alone.” She turned to Andy. “And you, you can go rat on me again like when you caught me smoking. What can they do, make me stand up and recite more lines? I’m a ‘bad girl,’ I know. I don’t care anymore.”

            “Say…” said Andy, struck with a sudden thought. “Where did you get those cigarettes, anyway? The teachers don’t allow tobacco on campus. You couldn’t have brought them with you – they go through your luggage.”

            “Nah, a friend of mine from middle school sent them, wrapped up in a letter. The teachers didn’t check.”

            The three students looked at each other in horror.

_-how would he get components for a bomb-_

_-would he really want to blow up the school-_

_-this is a reunion, everyone is here now-_

_-if he was going to pick a day-_

_-the teachers didn’t check my mail-_

_-has anyone been scanning him?-_

_-where is he? has anyone been watching him?-_

            Their thoughts tumbled together in a frantic panic. Barbara was on her feet.

            “We have to find Mason!”

            “No no,” said Henry, “we have to tell the teachers!” He turned and ran back to the building.

            Barbara closed her eyes and concentrated very hard. A few moments later, she looked over at Andy.

            “How strong are you?”

            “You mean telepathically?”

            “Yeah, what’s your rating?”

            “Six.”

            “That might be enough. I can’t do it alone.” She pulled off her gloves and told him to do the same.

            Andy looked at her in horror. “You can’t take off your gloves in public! Are you insane?! If you thought what they did to you for smoking was bad-”

            “Do it! We can find Mason, I saw this in a vid, this is what bloodhounds do when they’re searching for rogues. Or do you want that son of a bitch to blow up the school?”

            “What do you of all people know about what bloodhounds do?!”

            He realized suddenly that he’d been underestimating her all along – for all she’d been pretending not to care, she’d actually been paying very close attention in other ways. And she had to be a very strong telepath – he remembered how easily she’d ‘cast those silly images at vid time. The whole class had seen them. He hadn’t thought much of it, until having to work so hard to ‘cast his spider “costume” put things in perspective. How strong was she, anyway?

            Andy glanced around – everyone was inside. No one would see him take off his gloves unless there were cameras on the rooftops.

            Oh, to hell with it.

            “OK,” he said, removing his gloves, “but you have to promise not to talk about this. And… this doesn’t mean anything, you know, about us.”

            “I swear, just do it.”

            She grabbed his palm, and a jolt went through his body.

_Now do you remember what his mind felt like? Focus on that._

            Andy didn’t, really – he’d stayed away from Mason like all the other students had. He let Barbara do the work of looking for Mason, using the physical connection with him to magnify the reach of her senses.[1]

            “Got him… he’s in a storage closet downstairs, and he’s trying to build some kind of device. What the fuck is he doing down there?”

            She and Andy put their gloves on and ran back. A small crowd was standing in the foyer, among them a Psi Cop. Henry had already warned the adults – like a single organism, all eyes turned to the two students.

            Andy and Barbara didn’t have to explain what they knew. Their thoughts said it all, and in a moment they were pushing their way through the crowd in the auditorium, adults at their heels.

 _This way_ , someone ‘cast. _I know that closet._

            They ran downstairs, back through the same corridors that less than an hour before, Andy and Henry had wandered, searching for Barbara. When they reached the door, Andy tried the handle, but it was locked.

            POUND POUND POUND.

            “This is Teacher Huetson! Open this door immediately!”

            “Stand back.”

            The Psi Cop unholstered her PPG and shot the door handle clean off.

            The small, windowless room was cluttered with cleaning supplies, crates and brown cardboard boxes. Mason sat on the floor in the center of the room, barehanded, a hand-made device in front of him.

            “You’re too late,” he said, with a satisfied grin. “You’re all dead.”

            What happened next was a blur. Barbara screamed and tackled him to the floor, while the adults rushed into the room and shoved Andy back out into the hallway.

 _RUN!_ someone screamed into his mind, and his legs obeyed the command before the rest of him had a chance to even register it. He was halfway across the courtyard before he regained control of his body.

            People were pouring outside, confused.

            “Keep moving, keep moving,” one of the Psi Cops was saying, as he waved his arms to direct people away from the building. “This is not a drill.”

            Some adults gathered around Andy. He must have been blooping like mad.

            “Oh my God,” said one woman in the thirties, “I saw that news story. The same boy? He tried to build a bomb?!” Her gloved fingers flew to her open mouth.

            “How did he manage to build a bomb here,” asked a man, “in a community of telepaths?”

            She pointed to Andy. “He doesn’t know the bomb was functional, Mark, he just knows the boy was trying.”

            “But how did he do it here?”

            “His parents were rogue sympathizers,” Andy said, catching his breath. “They must have taught him how to circumvent school security.”

            “Someone needs to call the director this instant,” an older man was saying. “This rogue business has gone far enough. Principal Machesky should fly to Geneva tonight. They’re not just attacking our offices – now they’re attacking our children.”

            “I’ll tell you how he did it,” said another man. “School security expects the usual. Fights, kids trying to run away, maybe on rare occasion even parents breaking in to ‘rescue’ their children. Not bombs on Birthday! What is the world coming to?!”

            Andy watched adults carry the unconscious body of Mason out of the building, on stretcher, and bring him to a waiting Psi Corps vehicle.

            “Mindblasted,” a Psi Cop said. “I hope they scan his guts out, like they should have done before they let him in here. I don’t understand – in my day, a kid like that wouldn’t be here.[2] I know Karen Machesky very well, but I don’t know why she would let someone so dangerous into this school.”

            Andy remembered what Barbara had said about the director. Something was very wrong. The Corps wouldn’t have let Mason into the school knowing he was dangerous, right?

            Andy heard commotion by the front gates and turned to look – the media had arrived. The campus was a bubble, but it was still in the middle of Chicago.

            Normals. There were normals on campus. He hadn’t seen bare hands in months. For some reason he didn’t understand, the sight scared him. Normals – and their bare hands – didn’t belong inside the gates.

 

[1] _A Race Through Dark Places_

[2] Inference. Someone judged to be a danger to the school community would not be allowed to attend a Psi Corps school. Deadly Relations, p. 44 describes a dangerous teenage criminal with a long rap sheet who, when he entered the Corps, was immediately transferred to a reeducation camp. In contrast, see Gregory Keyes, Final Reckoning, p. 3-4, wherein a twelve-year-old telepath who killed a normal (possibly in self-defense) was granted absolution and a new life in the Corps.


	6. Chapter 6

            It was several hours before campus settled down again. Both the normal and the Corps media wanted to cover the story and record interviews, but the teachers did all the talking and forbade the students from speaking on camera.

            Andy’s friends waited in the auditorium, eating the snacks that had been abandoned in the evacuation. Barbara, they heard, was still being debriefed by the authorities.

            “Can you believe it?” Deepa was saying, her legs swinging from the edge of the stage. “It’s like the vids. A rogue telepath gets into the school and builds a bomb on Birthday.”

            “And then a later jumps on it!” said Henry. “They have to make a vid about this. This is the most exciting day ever.”

            When the whole community finally reconvened, Principal Machesky led an utterly bewildered Barbara up on stage, and pinned a medal to her chest.

            The grey-haired woman gave a small laugh, “This is the most unusual Birthday I’ve ever had,” she began, “but these are unusual times. Barbara Cook, I am proud to award you with this year’s Patel Prize.”

            Barbara stood speechless.

            “As most of you have probably already heard, Barbara is the student who so bravely tracked down our attacker, and then tackled him to keep him from exploding the device in his possession. Thankfully, he wasn’t quite as close to building a functional explosive as he thought,” and the room let out a collective sigh of relief, “but in the moment, none of us had a way to know that. Barbara, yours was the kind of bravery and self-sacrifice that could have saved hundreds of lives.”

            The community gave her a standing ovation. She stared at them blankly.

            “Barbara, I know you haven’t been a model student here, and so I’m sure you’re surprised to be up here with me. But the Patel Prize isn’t to honor the student who always obeys curfew. I knew Burian Patel. He was a young man who wanted nothing more than to protect his people, and that’s exactly how he lived, and died – fighting terrorists who would murder us in cold blood. Yes, we take rules seriously at this school, but that’s to build discipline, to build character and a healthy respect for authority. But at its essence, life in the Corps isn’t about the little things, but about family, about sacrifice, about what matters most. We each know in our hearts that what is best for the Corps outweighs any of our individual wants or desires, even our lives. And through your actions today, Barbara, through your selfless sacrifice, you have demonstrated those values better than most of us ever have the chance to.”

            Andy thought about that morning. To him, he had just been playing a part, the Selfish Spider that learned his lesson and threw himself into the pit. Barbara had actually gone and done it. She could have been blown to bits, throwing herself on that homemade bomb.

            He looked at Barbara, still speechless on the stage. It would take a while to sink in. She was a hero now.

            “Barbara, I know it’s not often that the Corps accepts women to the bloodhound units, because it’s such a physically demanding job,[1] but what you’ve shown here today, in your initiative and ingenuity to find our attacker, your leadership, your telepathic skill in tracking him… still untrained, yet! – and in your fearless rush into danger… well, that’s not easy to come by. Discipline can be learned. If you would like to make a career in the bloodhound units, you whole-heartedly have my endorsement.”

            More cheers went up from the audience. Jermaine leRoy climbed up on stage and shook Barbara’s hand. All the teachers followed.

            “Go Barbara!” shouted Hideo.

            As soon as she could get away, she ran out of the auditorium and back to the dorms. No one followed.

            “Well, she did it,” said Henry. “Just like in the vids. She complained and complained, and then saved the day and learned what life in the Corps is all about. I never thought I’d see it happen for real.”

            “And when they make a vid about this,” said Kit, “we can tell the kids that this is how it really happened.”

*****

            It took Barbara several weeks to begin to adjust to her new status as a hero. Even though her face had not appeared on the news, her name had, and she received hundreds of (screened) letters from telepath youth all over Earth Alliance space, thanking her for her sacrifice and loyalty. Several teachers in other Corps schools also wrote to say that they were redesigning their lessons on sacrifice because of her.

            “Fictional vids can be powerful, but there is nothing as inspirational as a true story,” one teacher wrote. “My students are your age, so yours is a story they can relate to.”

            Barbara might have been confused, but the other students on campus were less so. The collective experience of surviving a bomb threat had brought everyone together in new ways, and no longer did laters and Corps-raised telepaths sit at separate tables in the cafeteria. Barbara may have wanted to go back to her clique, but they’d moved on without her.

            “Don’t be stupid, Barbara,” Andy overheard Gabrielle say one day. “Why should we sit at separate tables? Rogues don’t care who our parents are, they want to kill us all, just because we’re here.”

            Andy wrote home and told his parents about the new security measures the school was implementing, including first and foremost a new policy of opening all student mail and packages. His letters from home, which, though rare, had been lengthy and full of personal detail, suddenly became short and factual. His parents weren’t rogue sympathizers by a long shot, Andy knew, but they didn’t trust the Corps, and they never would. If there had ever been a chance that they would visit him again, that dream had gone up in a puff of smoke.

            Something had changed on campus since Birthday, however, and Andy had changed with it. This time, their rejection didn’t sting quite as much as it once had.

 

[1] _Strange Relations_. The books either don’t give a gender, or describe bloodhounds as male. Dark Genesis, p. 131 gives the gender of four bloodhounds (male); p. 164 does not give a gender; p. 180-182 does not give a gender, p. 264-265 gives the gender of one bloodhound (male). In Deadly Relations, the women on p. 8 are explicitly described as not Psi Cops or bloodhounds (Bester concludes they must be business telepaths based on how they are dressed); p. 101-104 does not give the gender; p. 164 gives the gender of just one of the bloodhounds (male); p. 205 does not give the gender; p. 207 gives the gender of Department Sigma’s bloodhounds (male).


End file.
